Creek conditions

PUEBLO COUNTY commissioners are getting serious about holding Colorado Springs accountable for fixing conditions that make Fountain Creek so flood- and stormwater-prone.

The commissioners will invite public comment on Fountain Creek issues at a hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. Sept. 20 in the commissioners’ meeting room on the main floor of the Pueblo County Courthouse.

“What I would like to see is for Pueblo to stop being flooded and for people in north Pueblo County to keep from losing their land to these floods,” Commissioner Liane “Buffie” McFadyen said this week.

Commissioners McFadyen, Terry Hart and Sal Pace were not in office when their predecessors negotiated conditions that Colorado Springs Utilities promised to meet in order to receive a 1041 land-use permit to construct the Southern Delivery System through our county.

One of the conditions was for Colorado Springs Utilities to fund stormwater improvements so as to reduce storm-related damage to not only the Fountain Creek channel but to adjoining property owners whose land has been washed away by flood waters.

In fact, a stormwater utility enterprise was made a condition of another crucial document — the Bureau of Reclamation’s environmental impact statement on SDS.

Now, however, Colorado Springs has repealed its stormwater enterprise, which was to be the source of funding such projects. Then Colorado Springs Utilities officials had the gall to claim that they can still fund the much-needed improvements. Yet Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach and the city council are at loggerheads over who should foot the bill.

And there’s a growing suspicion in Pueblo and Southern Colorado that when the Springs actually gets around to major stormwater improvements, the work will be focused on Colorado Springs, rather than downstream in Pueblo.

We’ve seen enough of these cynical political games. Were Springs Utilities officials sincere when they made promises to secure the 1041 permit from Pueblo County? Or did they figure all along to nickel-and-dime their neighbors to the south because they sensed a lack of backbone in Pueblo?

We’re delighted that the current commissioners are showing the backbone to hold Colorado Springs to account. There’s still time to force the issue since the SDS pipeline from Lake Pueblo won’t be turned on until 2016. This gives Pueblo County three years to enforce the permit conditions that we were promised.

The editorials appearing on the editorial page are the opinions of The Pueblo Chieftain as decided by the newspaper's editorial board. Members of the board are Robert H. Rawlings, publisher and editor; Jane Rawlings, assistant publisher; Steve Henson, managing editor; and Tom McAvoy, editorial research director.